The guy at the foreign exchange bureau looked at me a little strangely. Apparently my request was unusual.
I had put on the desk two Rwandan 500-franc notes (each worth about 75 cents), and asked him to convert one of them to Burundian francs and the other to Ugandan shillings.
I admit that there are not many plausible situations in which this request would have been useful to anyone. Perhaps I could now go to Burundi or Uganda (or both!) and buy a candy bar or something. Given the nature of foreign exchange bureaux, perhaps not even.
See, I collect foreign currency—not fanatically, but it is something I have put quite a bit of effort into over the years, and if I am ever in an interesting place I try to augment my collection. African currency is often really hard to track down in the United States, so as long as I am here I want to capitalize on, say, the presence of Burundian francs at exchange bureaux. I bet the exchange rate I got was pretty bad, but I do not really care: the 1000-shilling and (Burundian) 2000-franc notes that came out of the exchange are probably both new for me, and I am quite certain that they would have cost me quite a bit more than 75 cents closer to home.
Collectively, I think that the things I bought in Kigali this morning describe me pretty well: the two notes mentioned above, four chocolate bars from weird Middle Eastern brands, four packs of tissues, four eyedroppers-full of Akabanga, ten postcards, two newspapers and a bottle of water. When a cashier didn’t have optimal change, I also scored a 20-franc and a 10-franc coin, which almost completes my collection of Rwandan currency to bring home (see above).
Today was my first time being in town unaccompanied. I got a ride from my host on his way to work, and then got out and just wandered around from about 8:00 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. This allowed me to do a lot of things I had been wanting to do, which made me happy.
I am really grateful for the companionship of everyone who has come with me everywhere, but when I am in a place I will always want to get to know it on my own terms: walk around semi-aimlessly, looking at a map every now and then to find my way around; stop unpredictably to look into a store (or exchange bureau, as it were); stop to take a panorama of the hillside view or a video of the traffic; just stand around for a bit taking in my surroundings. If I were with someone who did these things, I would probably get kind of annoyed; therefore, I really like having the opportunity to do it on my own.
Also, when I am on my own, my own patience, hunger and stamina are the only limits on how much I do and how far I go. Ergo, in my four-and-a-half hours I criss-crossed the city center several times, getting lost and finding myself again, never really sitting down and sustaining myself for the whole time on a chocolate bar and a bottle of water.
At the end of it all, I came out with, in addition to the items listed above, a pretty good idea of how to get around and a number of good pictures that I spent the afternoon editing. Success!
One of the places I went was the Camp Kigali Memorial, the site of the murder of 10 Belgian U.N. peacekeepers on the second day of the Genocide in 1994. They were protecting Rwanda’s moderate prime minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, but surrendered, outgunned, to a troop of Rwandan soldiers, who took them to a military camp and brutally killed them. It was one of the first high-profile acts of the Genocide (the prime minister was also killed), and was important in that it prompted Belgium to withdraw its 450 peacekeepers, the backbone of the U.N. force. The peacekeepers subsequently had no choice but to contract further, and were powerless between their numbers and their mandate to effectively combat the violence.
This memorial, funded by the Belgian government and now situated on the campus of the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology, is primarily to those ten peacekeepers. It is less ambitious and, I believe, smaller than some other memorials, but it is still quite moving. The building in which the events took place has been deliberately maintained in its bullet-ridden state; there are shrapnel marks on the inside walls and an indentation from a grenade explosion in the corner. Outside there is a stone pillar for each of the dead, with notches representing their ages (none older than 34).
The woman tending to the memorial figured out that I spoke some Kinyarwanda, so she told what happened in Kinyarwanda; I knew the story, so it was O.K. that I did not understand all of what she said—there was some vocabulary used that is not usually in beginners’ curricula—though I was happy with how much I did get. She said she was very happy to see that I was understanding her; given that she probably doesn’t have the most cheerful of jobs, that made me happy too.
I do not think I am being disrespectful by saying that the ten to whom this memorial is dedicated are of limited importance relative to the almost 1 million other victims. Their story is tragic and indicative of the carnage that engulfed Rwanda in 1994, but in most ways does not stand out from thousands of others that occurred in the same period. So the most troubling, affecting part of being there for me was not remembering their specific fates—though feel for them I certainly did—but seeing this pockmarked building and being reminded that 19 years ago the ground on which I was standing was a war zone where stories like theirs unfolded every day. That was hard to believe and, given some thought, hard to handle.
New Vocabulary Words for the Day
- urúbûga: forum (I think), section
- uburezi: education
- uburozi: poison
- gútêgeka: to rule, to govern (source of amátêgeko “laws”)
- úrwíibutso: memorial (from kwíiruka “to remember”)
- umuzize: victim
Vowels with an acute accent (e.g. á) have a phonetic high tone. Vowels with a circumflex (e.g. â) have a phonetic falling tone. Vowels with no accent have a low tone. Vowels that are doubled are long.
P.S. Thoughts on the horizontal lines? I realize these posts get kind of long, and I thought it might be helpful to break them up a bit. I may experiment with headings in the coming days as well.
Yes, the horizontal lines are a nice idea.
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